23 March 2011

Invest in young people, don't kick away the ladder -

Youth unemployment levels have hit an all time high. Here in Birmingham, one in five young people are unemployed.

There is now a real danger that the next generation will find it harder to get on in life than the last. This is something we should all be worried about.

But, instead of investing in young people, the Conservative-led government are kicking away the ladder that young people have been trying to climb. At a time when young people need support to succeed in a difficult economic climate, I am very concerned by the removal of schemes that were helping them achieve their full potential.

The government has scrapped the Future Jobs Fund, abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance and trebled university tuition fees. These decisions will hit young people here in Birmingham hard.

The Future Jobs Fund, introduced by the last Labour government, helped fund paid employment opportunities for unemployed under twenty four year olds. Around 2,500 young people in Birmingham had benefitted from this scheme before the government decision to axe it in May. As a result a further 2,500 unemployed young people have been denied the opportunity to take part in this valuable programme. Instead they’ve received a message from the government: you’re on your own.

At the same time, the government has also scrapped the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) – an allowance that allowed young people from poorer backgrounds to stay on in education after 16. The EMA has been extremely important to sixth form students in Birmingham – in the last academic year almost 20,000 young people across the city received EMA.

And the decision to treble tuition fees will place huge financial strain on individuals who choose to study at university and may also deter many people from lower income families from even applying in the first place. Whilst they are increasing fees for students by so much, the government is cutting public funding for university teaching by a massive 80%.

As Labour leader Ed Miliband has said, the combined impact of these decisions means there is now a real fear that the British promise to the next generation of greater opportunity, prosperity and wellbeing, will be broken and the next generation will find it harder to get on than the last.

That is why Labour are calling on the government to repeat last year’s bank bonus tax this year to boost jobs and growth – including a £600m fund for youth jobs to help more than 90,000 young people into work at a time when youth unemployment has reached almost one million.

Young people want to study, train and work. It is important that they can do so – not just for their own quality of life but also because the future success of our country’s economy depends on it.